Make It Rain: Shaman Cataclysm Preview

We shall neither fail nor falter; we shall not weaken or tire…give us the tools and we will finish the job.–Winston Churchill

Shamans, for once, get to be the first to receive the Good News about their class changes coming in Cataclysm. Restoration Shamans have quite a bit to look forward to as we see our set of healing tools grow by a substantial amount. A quick rundown (courtesy Nethaera):

Healing Wave (Level 4): While the shaman already has an ability called Healing Wave, we’re adding another spell to the class’s direct-healing arsenal and giving it a familiar name. The current Healing Wave will be renamed Greater Healing Wave, and the intent is for the “new” Healing Wave to be the shaman’s go-to heal. Lesser Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave will be used on a more situational basis.

The impact of this spell will be seen in it’s mana cost relative to it’s Lesser and Greater siblings. It’s not real clear how this fits, though, since cast time is also directly related to spell choice. LHW is our go to heal for anomalous single-target damage that requires a quick topping. With current haste levels, (Greater) Healing Wave currently is sparingly used outside of tank healing and single target healing where you have time before the next hit.

A spell between those seems to fall into the “too slow” or “not enough” category, unless it’s mana cost is a good bit less than Lesser, Greater, and Chain Heal.

-Earthliving Weapon: Heals the target slightly and buffs the shaman’s next healing spell by 20%.

As my buddy Zao described it: Shammy Judgement.

Depending on the size of the heal, this will probably be a two piece tier 10 riptide-esque raid heal tool. Cast it on a nearby target that needs some healing and boost your next spell. In short, a candidate for a new Clique binding.

Using this on cooldown will mean you’ll be casting it once approximately once every 7 casts, and will need to burn a GCD before the 8th. The effects on your range are also noticeable. In all likelihood, if your target is 31 or more yards away, you will not be able to cast, creating a dead zone.

Healing Rain (Level 83): An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. There is no limit to the number of players who can potentially be affected; however, there are diminishing returns when healing a large number of targets, much like the diminishing returns associated with AoE damage spells. This should give Restoration shaman another healing tool that improves their group-healing and heal-over-time capabilities. 2-second cast time. 30-yard range. 10-second duration. 10-second cooldown.

Ah, a real hot, something to blanket the raid with. The cooldown/duration match-up will allow us to keep something up for all those super-fun raid wide aura fights (can we get this bumped up to 80 so we can try it before Cataclysm?). The cast time is reasonable, and the mana cost will be steep for sure.

The only real question: What’s the graphic? Do we get to whip out a super soaker and shower the melee with heals?

Spiritwalker’s Grace(Level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it’s necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration, 2-minute cooldown.

This is a really really cool ability. One of the many heartaches when healing as a shaman (or paladin) is how limited you are when a fight requires a lot of movement while damage is going out all over the place. This is more prevalent in 10 man raiding than 25 (due to healing class diversity), but can be frustrating on certain encounters.

Ten seconds gives us time to get off 3 to 4 well placed heals while moving. Coupled with Nature’s Swiftness and Healing Rain, shaman will no longer be pinned to the ground as a chain heal turret. Sindragosa would be a great place to have a spell like this. The time spent moving to hide behind an ice block feels like an eternity. You’re trying to clear your buffets and the raid is taking a ton of damage, encouraging you to skip blocks or do some clever “GCD hopping” across the room.

Various Talent/Ability Changes:

-Restoration shaman and other healing classes will need to pay attention to mana more than they’ve had to during Weath of the Lich King. Spirit will be the Restoration shaman’s primary mana-regeneration stat.

-Shamans will get decurse as a base cleanse (Cleanse Spirit). Restoration shamans will be able to use talent points to add defensive magic dispel to their repertoire (two effects, one spell).

-No more cleansing totem. All cleanses will cost more mana and will be “wasted” if used on a target that is not affected by a debuff.

-Totem of Wrath replaces Flametongue totem and is changed to +4% spellpower for the group. Elementals/Demonology Locks will improve this to 10%.

-Spirit Link will likely be worked back into deep Restoration in some form. The idea is that you will be able to link targets together so they share damage…

-Ancestral Knowledge will boost mana pool size, not intellect.

–Mastery, Deep Healing: Your direct heals will do more healing when the target’s health is lower. This will scale to damage rather than have arbitrary break points.

Decisions…decisions…decisions. That’s what we’re being asked to make, and I fully embrace this line of thought by Blizzard. The skill of a healer is measured in his/her ability to make a decision quickly and correctly. Spamming the same heal or having debuffs cleansed automatically are not intelligent play decisions. Proper use of a cooldown, spell selection, and mana management should be encouraged, not made impossible by a watered down skill set of outdated abilities (horrible shaman pun).

Encounter design will hopefully take these abilities under strong consideration and create some really tough to heal fights. I want to be challenged, I want my global cooldowns to really matter, and I want to be able to use the tools given to help expose a healer’s true skill.

Impact

This preview further entrenches shaman into a role as a raid healer that specializes in mitigating RSTS damage. One of the best things about playing a shaman is that we have very strong, concentrated heals. Riptide and Lesser healing wave currently fills those roles, but now with Healing Rain we will be able to fill in the gaps between chain heals if necessary.

The outlier here is the new Healing Wave. Three separate single target heals is intriguing, and I don’t think we’ll be able to nail down the exact use of them until the new “mana model” is revealed/tested. Also, Shaman still don’t have a day-saving external cooldown (a la Pain Suppression) that we know of. It’s the one missing piece that I think could bring it all together, but perhaps that’s getting a little too greedy. It’s liking wrapping Filet Mignon in bacon.

Spirit Walker’s Grace is something that I’ll be greatly looking forward to and it will be in the back of my mind every time I’m running to a Spore or avoiding a Bone Storm.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Shamans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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6 Responses to Make It Rain: Shaman Cataclysm Preview

Is Spirit Link not along the lines of a ‘saves the day’ style cooldown? I imagine it would only be so in combination with the heals of others though, I don’t really know how it would work *healing nub*

That would really depend on how it ends up being implemented. The previous version had it on a moderate cooldown (15 seconds?) and it was regularly used to share damage between two or three targets.

My guess is they could probably morph into a spell similar to Divine Guardian, which would be pretty neat.Edit
Original spell text from Wrath beta:

You link the friendly target with up to 2 nearby friendly targets, causing 50% of any damage taken to be distributed to the linked targets. If any target takes a blow greater than 30% of their health, or the shared damage would reduce the target’s health below 20%, the link is broken. You can only have one link active at any time.

What was nice about the idea of spirit link the first time around was that shaman pretty much only raid healed and spirit link looked like something you could use to turn an encounter where only the tank takes damage into a perfect chain heal prospect.

Your main focus gets 50% of the damage they take thrown to 2 nearby allies (lets stipulate 25% each) and then chain heal the through the tank to the both of them.

You not only reduce incoming tank damage but increase the effect of your bread and butter spell in a previously useless situations.

Now with the 30% of HP done to any of the targets breaking it.. think of a 60k hp tank, how often do they get hit for larger than 20k hp? pretty darn often. That would also negate any chance of it being an external damage reduction cooldown.

This time around it will have to be a small amount of passive damage linking, think a warriors vigilance transferring 10% damage taken instead of threat, or a longish (2min) cooldown short duration ability to mimic hand of sacrifice.